Singapores political sagas prompt memes but wont hurt stability: dark clouds will pass
While analysts and citizens alike have been asking tough questions about the handling of the sagas, the scandals have also sparked an explosion of memes and wisecracks – some in Singlish, the local patois – across social media and on platforms such as Reddit.
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Singapore’s political scandal deepens as 2 MPs resign amid separate high-profile corruption probe
Singapore’s political scandal deepens as 2 MPs resign amid separate high-profile corruption probe
Singapore social media researcher Jeremy Sng suggested that citizens were using humour as a “safe” way to poke fun at high-profile leaders and express bewilderment at the unexpected state of political affairs.
Politics in Singapore – a country which has been governed by the PAP without interruption since 1959 and where outright anti-establishment dissent is kept under a tight lid – has in most times been a placid affair, apart from the occasional scandal.“There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen,” one commenter wrote on Reddit’s Singapore channel, where political gossip and gags about both the PAP and WP have surged this week.
Yeolo.sg, a popular meme page on Instagram, posted an image of a worried-looking Prime Minister Lee with the caption: “When you want to hand over to your juniors but they cmi [cannot make it].”
Another meme featured a mock film poster for “Parliament” with images of starring characters including Tan, Perera and Seah. Prime Minister Lee’s estranged brother, Lee Hsien Yang, also joined in on the action, posting a meme of three people watching the news on a laptop and eating popcorn. It was captioned: “Popcorn shortage in Singapore”.
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Serious business
Aside from the memes, social media discussions and commentaries in the national media delved into the implications of the political dramas for the country.
Minister Iswaran’s arrest by the anti-corruption agency last week was followed by another shocker, the arrest of the Singapore-based Malaysian billionaire Ong Beng Seng – also for a corruption probe.Officials have not said what the probe is about. Both men were key players in the country’s hosting of a Formula One race since 2008.The PAP in June also dealt with a separate headache following an anti-corruption investigation into veteran ministers K. Shanmugam and Vivian Balakrishnan for their respective rental of state-owned colonial bungalows.The probe yielded no evidence of wrongdoing, but critics said the saga brought into focus what they said was the upper-class lifestyle of PAP ministers – who are among the world’s most highly-paid public sector officials.“It would be a mistake to rush to assume that [the PAP], or Singapore, is fundamentally compromised,” Devadas Krishnadas, the owner of a public policy consultancy and a former civil servant, said in a LinkedIn post.
“Recency effects of multiple episodes involving so many big names can create mulling dark clouds but most of these should pass soon,” he wrote.
He added that businesspeople and investors were likely to trust that Singapore would remain pro-business and be well-governed, even though they could be “less starry-eyed” about the city state in the longer term.
Prime Minister Lee, for his part, acknowledged in a press conference on Monday that the PAP was dealing with “a series of high-profile issues”.
“I think from time to time, these things happen. When they happen, we have to make sure we deal with them, and deal with them rigorously as well as transparently, and everybody can see that we are doing that,” Lee said.
“No system can be completely infallible. You appoint people, sometimes things go wrong, you have to find out, and you have to put it right. You have to find out yourself, whether or not somebody tells you something is wrong, and put it right,” Lee said in the briefing with local media editors.
The prime minister, in power since 2004, is unlinked to the various scandals, although some commenters said he had to answer why he did not act decisively to order former speaker Tan and Cheng Li Hui, the another MP who resigned on Monday, to step aside when he first found out about their affair after the 2020 general election.
In his remarks on Monday, Lee said it was “completely inappropriate” for a speaker to have a relationship with an MP. He also said he had hoped they would end their affair after being counselled by him. Lee is expected to give a fuller explanation on the timeline of events in parliament in August.
The WP, which has nine elected MPs, has not commented on the PAP’s latest drama involving Tan and Cheng, as it reels from its own public relations crisis.
Local media on Tuesday published reports that the WP leadership, including Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh, had known about the affair between Perera – popular for his biting parliamentary questions – and Seah, but had sat on the matter.
The party has convened a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
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